Controversial vaccine is the subject of a lunch talk at Fetzer Center

By Daniel Gimmler
Staff Reporter

The controversies surrounding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine will be the subject of a talk on Thursday. The controversy surrounding the HPV vaccine was given steam by Michelle Bachmann in a Republican presidential debate in Fall 2011, where she expressed concern about the vaccine’s required administration to middle school girls in Washington D.C. and Virginia.

Dr. Art Caplan, the Emmanuel and Robert Hart director of the Center for Bioethics and the Sidney D. Caplan professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, will give a lunch talk this week addressing the issue at noon on  Thursday, Feb. 23 at the Fetzer Center’s Putney Auditorium.

The talk, titled “The HPV Vaccine Controversy: Science, Ethics and Politics,” will be free of charge and open to everyone, and a light lunch will also be available to those who attend.

Caplan, a bioethics scholar who has authored and edited over 20 books concerning medical ethics, offers an expert perspective on how controversies such as that which surrounds the HPV virus can be rationalized, as well as the science and politics behind the issue, according to a press release.

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